The winding road to Web3d:

Steppingstones for aspiring virtual world creators.

Date of compilation: 4/29/2007 At: 10:45:16 PM: Norwegian time.

Incidentally, if you are looking for a versatile and powerful tool to organize and share your web-serendipity, here is the one I am using to compile this list.
Comments, corrections or priceless pointers? Please don't hesitate to drop me an email.

1. APPLICATIONS: projects, content implementationsLet's start with what is already there for us to use and enjoy. It seems characteristic of Web3D that there's a lot of talk ABOUT it, but not so many that are actually authoring content.

Lately this appears to be changing with emerging new sophisticated, user-friendly tools for rich-media authoring. Web3D is no longer a hopelessly esoteric gimmick; major corporations are learning its value in the marketplace. Are we seing the beginnings of a virtual bonanza?

Demicron® is a leading provider of Web3D solutions. By using Demicron's WireFusion™ technology companies can quickly create stunning 3D presentations for the web, and for multiple purposes, such as e-commerce, e-learning, computer based training (CBT), sales training, customer support, prototyping, architectural visualizations and virtual tours.

GeoVRML is an official Working Group of the Web3D Consortium. It was formed on 27 Feb 1998 with the goal of developing tools and recommended practice for the representation of geographical data using the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). The desire is to enable geo-referenced data, such as maps and 3-D terrain models, to be viewed over the web by a user with a standard VRML plugin for their web browser.

Proprietary browser works well. This is possibly the dominant web3D application on the market today.The search-and-zoom feature works well. A few spelling errors in international placenames.

"Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips."

It is well worth to keep an eye on the emergence of virtual humans in guise of H-anim, the accepted standard for humanoid animation. Quite a number of avatars to download here, to study, disect and see how things look on the inside. Be careful not to break bones and joints.

Haptek's virtual characters are, well, quite some characters. You do need the plug-in to see the virtual saleswomen- but it's worth the trouble! Go to the Corporate Section for a meeting with Ms. Sophistication, Incarnate. Very believable. Spin her around, and watch her hair fly. I want a secretary like this, with her foxy wit. To begin with you may want to download the free demo of "People Putty"

"Haptek software creates photo-realistic, 3-D, full-bodied, fully animated, morphing and emotive characters in dynamic environments that visually and verbally interact with the user and with one another over the Internet, in real time and at virtually any bandwidth"

"The best device to hold people’s interest is - other people. We human beings find ourselves endlessly interesting. In line with this truth, Haptek has created (and has patented) the only software which creates real-time, truly interactive, never repetitive, “artificial” people. Haptek’s Software Personalities creates automated, three-dimensional, interactive characters with real-time human emotions that can visually and verbally engage users over the Internet."

Humanoid animation controlled by Java interface. Does not work on my Opera, or on IE. Does it work for you?

"You can interactively model human animation on this web page with avatars that are compliant with the H-Anim standard with a Java enabled browser and a VRML plug-in -- other tools could be used -- but since they all strive towards platform independence, they are often used together.

H-Anim is an open standard that is independent any of operating system software, computer hardware, and independent of any company.

This artist is good at animating elves and angels. Blaxxun interactive with javascript navigation tied to hotmap. Quite busy virtual community, although you should know Hebrew to socialize. Aesthetics and interface are well done.

"iseemedia is a software development company providing customers with dynamic and interactive, resolution-on-demand, rich media content and document delivery solutions for the Internet and Mobile networks."

ParallelGraphics has always excelled in scientific applications for VRML. These examples are quite impressive. I recommend viewing them with the latest version of Parallelgraphics browser, although they might also work with Bitmanagement ver.6.2

The site demonstrates Web-friendly virtual reality technology, called Web3D, using the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). It presents model of the Lunar Module including its inner structure and technical parameters. Also the design of rotary and jet engines and working model of ordinary lathe is presented using the same technique.

Kaon is actively marketing its technology for online sales. Customers include Saab and Dell.Lately empracing 3D in Adobe, U3D application, that would be.

Kaon's 3D Catalog is a brand new way to showcase your company's products on your web site. In addition to the product features, benefits, and specifications which you already share through fixed web pages or PDF files, the 3D Catalog brings your products to life in ways no other catalog ever could.

Meson applications rely on the minimal Java 1.1 feature set, so they run on all platforms, and all browsers. The Meson applet is used to automatically deliver Kaon's Advisor client into the browser environment, and is the key to Kaon's unique FLASH+3D capability.

Development has been underway for quite some time. The use of the Brazilian Lua, the opensource Ogre, in this emerging cybercommunity is promising. The visionaries have found support in major business corporations, government, as well as diehard '68er' idealists.

It's refreshing to see someone out to chance the world . . .

This Digital Universe is an intuitively organized, multimedia Web that will inform, educate, engage and involve people worldwide. A growing global alliance of researchers, scholars and experts are beginning to use ManyOne’s rich-media tools to convey knowledge in innovative and visually astounding ways.

Myst V | UbisoftOfficial website for Myst V: End of Ages. An art, a civilization. A beginning, an end. An adventure.Date added: 10/21/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Myst is a classic fantasy adventuer game, beautifully designed. This site uses Flash to emulate the 3D interface. Their success illustrates the market's thirst for "wistful intimacy" and aesthetic values in gaming. Good place to go to learn appealing design in Web3D. Very appealing user interface.

A fine showcase of applied QTVR, some with VR objects.The access interface is attractive and well organized around interactive maps at varying levels of detail. There is, in some of the areas, a working navigation implementation where positions and viewpoint on the map is tied to the 360 panorama and its orientation. This is still rather rare but clearly worth implementing since one of the major problems with Web3D is the visitors' disorientation in a virtua world without intuitive means of navigation.

Now free, with a booming virtual economy. But up-to-date hardware is needed. I have been unable to get very far in my Second Life with my modest laptop.

Second Life debunks the myth of "Death by Plug-In". Despite high demands on hardware, computer savvy, and a high and steep learning curve for those with creative ambitions, business is booming, and skilled entrepreneurs are turning a real profit from sales of virtual wares.

The potentials for richness and intensity of experience seem to attract a crowd hungry for something beyond the trivial and commonplace.

Haptics (relating to or proceeding from the sense of touch) is yet another field that is being pioneered, often as an extension to X3D.

Of course, this area still appears hopelessly esoteric and science-fiction-like to us mere mortals.

H3D APIWorld's first X3D based haptic API, built from the ground up from more than 10 years of experience in writing haptic software development tools. H3D API takes advantage of OpenGL accelerated hardware for graphics rendering.

SenseGraphics AB is a privately owned company based in Stockholm, Sweden. It was founded in June 2004 by four former employees of Reachin Technologies; Johan M. Beskow, Mark Dixon, Daniel Evestedt and Tommy Forsell.

"We are investigating several game development software programs for the use of developing a video game in which emergency first responders will be challenged to react to scenarios involving mass casualities, bioterrorist attacks, plane crashes and fire."

"We are using 3d Studio Max for character modeling, MultiGen Creator for terrain development, and we are assembling it all together in a game mod of Unreal Tournament 2004. Through our attempts to make sense of these programs, we have spent countless hours sifting through the the forums, the tutorials, the manuals and the how-to books."

Some of these Worlds are well worth revisiting for elegant solutions to limited bandwidth.Classic VRML art!

The Celestia Motherlode: HomeThe Celestia Motherlode is a site based on Celestia, a free, 3-D, real-time space simulator. It is a place for the Celestia community to catalog, publish and maintain Celestia resources.Date added: 11/21/2006 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

The Celestia Motherlode is a repository for various addons like textures, models or celestial objects for Celestia. Celestia is a free, interactive (real-time), 3D astronomy program.

The Khronos Group: Open Standards, Royalty Free, Dynamic Media APIsThe Khronos Group promotes the deployment and development of open standard APIs to enable authoring and playback of dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and embedded devices. Current APIs are OpenGL ES, OpenML, OpenMAX, OpenSL ES, and Collada.Date added: 10/23/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Porting OgenGL to handheld devices, this company joins a hot emerging market.Web3D is already being embedded in a variety of devices.

"OpenGL® ES is a royalty-free, cross-platform API for full-function 2D and 3D graphics on embedded systems - including handheld devices, consoles, appliances and vehicles. It is a well-defined subset of desktop OpenGL, creating a flexible and powerful low-level interface between software and graphics acceleration."

The Riviera in Full Screen QTVR'sA photograpic journey through all the cities and villages of the French and Italian Riviera shown in 360-degree panoramas.Date added: 11/12/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Now it has come to this . . .These panoramas are so good that you don't need to go there for "real".

Islands are draped with detailed aerial photos over digital elevation data. Looks good, but requires quite a large download. Well worth a visit to these exotic islands at the tip of the Italian boot.

I would take this down to streetlevel and into the shops and markets and hostels. It has indeed been done at the island of Lippari, with QTVR, though not well synched to map/aerial photo. Somewhat interactive, but still lacking the immersive, intimate dimension.

"The 3D model is a part of a touristic web portal about Aeolian Islands.This website will have a lot of informations about the 7 islands: descriptions, images, 360 degree panoramas (more than 500 immersive images) and much other."

Extensive work in traditional vrml, shows Lubljana in a way that inspires you to visit.Phototextured geometry, painstakingly registered. Should have hotspots to make reservations, interact with the locals . . . where are the PEOPLE???

Genuinely interesting site showing the best entries in Web3D, year by year.Absolutely worth a visit!

2. LEARNNG: gentle introductions, advanced techniques, pragmatic tutorialsGetting into Web3D can be a confusing and frustrating experience. The tools are, by the very nature of the content, very complex, requiring more time and patience to learn than traditional 2D applications.

3D Studio Max and Maya are the traditional favorites, but there are several free or almost-free alternatives that are viable. Lately we see the free, and open source Blender getting long-deserved attention, along with the dynamic and innovative Softimage XSI. New tools and utilities are mushrooming everywhere at a rate that makes it impossible to keep track.

Regardless: your major investment will be your sustained effort in learning to USE these daunting tools. Here below are some resources that I have found useful in learning to get somewhat familiar with the virtual toolbox. Many of these are offered freely both in traditional written form, and now increasingly as video tutorials.

It stands to reason: if your site offers the best resources for learning Web3D, then there will be no lack of prospective customers for other related services or goods. Altruism sometimes proves to be a real good business practice!

3D World Simulation - Martin Baker EUCLIDEANSPACE!This site aims to hold all the information needed to build programs which display 3D simulations and games. There is theory about 3D modeling, animation and physics, and there are tutorials. There is a 3D editor program which can be extended to experiment with the topics covered here.Date added: 9/28/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

EuclideanSpace - building a 3D worldGood source for background foundational skills in math. Quite scholarly oriented, but accessible.If you want some formal insight in what is going on behind the screen, then look here.

The syntax of VRML is different from most programming languages- it's declarative in describing a world hierarchy in the scenegraph.

Time invested in learning classical VRML is not wasted. Much of the syntax and vocabulary is used in emerging x3D and mpeg-4. I find it useful to read through a number of different tutorials instead of just one. This one is not a bad place to start.

Maya is a huge program, but fortunately there is no lack of good tutorials. This is a good place to get started, first with this animated introduction to the basic terms of 3D.From there we can go on to more Maya-specific skills.

An introductory college course often includes the number "101" in its name to show that it covers information that's essential to the proficient understanding of a topic. We took our cue from educators to bring you "3D-101".

This glossary will be your guide along the path to understanding terms used in 3D computer graphics (CG) as they apply to Alias software products.

A good place for beginners to get into C++, IMHO If you are serous about developing apps in Web3D, you eventually will need some literacy in C++, along with scripting tools, and of course some familiarity with rendering engines.

A very flexible and stable way to work with Flash in DHTML, and potentially with X3D/SAI/EAI

developerWorks: Ajax how-to articles, tutorials, and community support for developersThe Ajax resource center provides a one-stop shop for Web developers seeking information on the Ajax programming model. The center provides a snapshot of all the Ajax and Web 2.0 related activities on developerWorks, including articles and tutorials, discussion forums, blogs, events, and news.Date added: 10/14/2006 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Step by step well written lessons in using VRML. Most would be helpful even after transiting to X3D

So, you want to create some cool 3D graphics for the internet, do you? Well, this is the place to learn. There are many technologies that can do that, but a great place to start is VRML. It's completely open, completely free, and anybody can put VRML pages online. Besides which, it'll teach you all the basics of 3D graphics as well.

This discussion offers valuable insight on altarnative techniques for displaying your position on a 2D map (Flash) on the side, or on a 3D layer.

Again, Frensh expertise, Cecile Mueller, Strassbourg. She is also developing demos for the new MPEG-4 browser from Bitmanagement. She clearly knows how to code Web3D.

Yes the simplest is to use a proximitysensor that sends the X-Y position to the flash scene, which calculate to which x-y pixel in the 2d it matches. You could also use a Layer3D for doing it simpler (and in 3D).

Kidz Online -Online 3D course using Caligari trueSpace 3.2Kidz Online(KOL), a federally-funded, nonprofit organization, combines the concept of peer-to-peer training with a web-based content delivery system, providing a fascinating and innovative new way to integrate technology into the classroom. Throughout this site, you'll find free videos and free lesson plans that will give you a new insight into using technology.Date added: 12/2/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

trueSpace 3.2 is still a good choice for beginners in 3D design.These streaming videos are made for "kids" - I'd say kids ANY age.

Seamless offers very detailed control all the way to the vertex level, and its handling of animation and solid handling of the new X3D makes it worth considering.

Also does a good job of importing Avatar Studio avatars, translating them to single mesh, standard pose.

When you invest your time in using seamless3d you know your time is well spent learning a sophisticated tool designed by someone who has high quality 3d real time animation as a priority not compromised by profit. It was the very code that was developed to create techuelife island that evolved to the program we know today as Seamless3d, a program that now has a practical interface designed to be both logical and intuitive and one that offers a high degree of control over the final outcome of every single vertex.

Very good introductory tutorial to get started with animating h-animThe Okino site is full of helpful information, especially in the challenging area of file format conversion.

For more than a decade and a half Okino has set the standards and provided the toolsets to translate & re-purpose complex data assemblies and scenes between all major CAD, DCC (animation) and VisSim packages.

Bob Crispen is a well known, well beloved Rev. of VRML.His sermons on Web3D are not only informative, but entertaining as well.We need someone to do this with today's technology!

The technology that's making it happen today is Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). You can get started on the 3D Web right now. That's what the VRMLworks is here for -- from picking a free browser, to visiting some of the worlds and virtual communities on the Web, to building your own worlds, to populating those worlds with free 3D models, to books, tutorials, tools, and resources, the VRMLworks is here to help.

Expect some serous fleshing-out here on the famous Web3D.org site tutorials section.Still somewhat abstract and plagued by pseudo-code, but that will change, of course.While there, don't forget to look around for X3D resources and news as well!

Sometimes you have avatars or other objects made of multiple meshes (indexed face sets) each with separate texturing/UW. XSI can combine these to obtain a single skin mesh, ready for use in h-anim animations as handled by Flux studio. Then add BVH moves, and watch your creature dance.

Well organized information meta-portal.His link-page to tutorials is extensive, useful.

3. TOOLS: authoring, converting, publishing, compiling, codingThis is a long list since we need to wield a rich arsenal of helpers no matter which way we turn in building Web3D.

At the time of this writing (April 24, 2007) I am at long last moving from general research to buildng actual prototypes in order to test the various tools and technology options with feedback from daring visitors. If you don't mind techontrash, please come and play in my virtual sandbox.

Commercial collection of tools for constructing 3D models for use in a wide spectrum of applications- from golf course design to civil engineering.

3D Plugins and Digital Tools For Digital Artists - 3DPlugins.comPluginz.com is the ultimate source of plugins and digital tools for digital artists. We have everything you need to make your projects stand out and blow your competition away. Come and see the latest products, news, reviews and hot digital downloads!Date added: 3/15/2006 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Inexpensive and versatile, Accutrans has wide applications. It's also reasonably priced. (USD 20) Shareware, but not crippled, and downloadable on the good old "honors" system terms.

The ability to turn almost any mesh into an h-anim compatible avatar is alluring. Also handles trueSpace .COBs and exports Activeworld animations.

Another intriguing ability is the program's feature to turn a wide range of elevation file formats to color coded 3D meshes. Possibly a quick way to do 3DGIS displayed in Flux.

At this time, it Reads, but does not Write the X3D fileformat

As of this date the program appears to be in an active phase of development.

Go Micromouse, goooooooooo!

AccuTrans 3D provides accurate translation of 3D geometry between the file formats used by many popular modeling programs. Positional and rotational information for the 3D meshes is maintained. Also many material attributes, such as color, index of refraction, reflection, specularity and Phong shading, are transferred between the files. Textures and UV coordinates are supported. The program has been enhanced with additional features to make it more than just a 3D file conversion program.

Possibly a bit like the offering from Haptek, realtime sync of spoken word and face.One way to improve realism of the virtual.

Our core technologies are lightweight, high performance, speech recognition engines. Using Hidden Markov Models, these technologies determine the statistically-best phonetical breakdown for a given audio file. The text-based technology, in addition to producing a precise phonetical breakdown, also produces an accurate breakdown of word positions in an audio file.

Our technologies work effectively across most, if not all, languages.

AutoDEM's Home PageExtraction and healing of coutours from raster imagesDate added: 8/13/2006 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Note: july 2006 - expect update will be available soon with many new goodies.Downloaded this. Free, not much in ways of help..Seems promising as an alternative to "Blackart" to interpolate DEMs, to smooth them in preparation for conversion to meshes, grid-based, or as TINs.

Commercial alternative. Uses LUA for scripting. Quick way to get started and actually distribute content. Due to the fact that AMS embeds Lua, it is also plug-in friendly.Free trial available. Highly recommended for its lucid tutorials.

Canadian company, providing tools for "next generation" games. Some concrete examples provided on the site. On the whole, the use of AI in both games as well as in more "serious" Web3D apps is sharply on the rise. Virtual intelligence is becoming more believable (and more threatening). . .

Procedural animation — driven by artificial intelligence techniques — is the next frontier. AI animation will augment the abilities of digital entertainers across disciplines. Filmmakers will get the depth and programmability of an infinite number of real–time game–style characters. It will give game designers the breadth, independence and tactics of film actors.

Game developers like this one, since it allows the creation of very realistic animation of nearly anything . .

CharacterFX is a character animation tool, created for gamers, artists, modellers and hobbyists. It allows you to breathe live into your meshes using skeletal animation and advanced tools like Inverse Kinematics or Weighted Vertices, but still it is easy enough to use for all levels of computer graphic artists.

The BS Exporter for Blender transforms Blender 2.37a and above into a complete authoring application for quality Web3D content using the extensions of BS Contact VRML/X3D. It exports to both the XML and VRML Classic encodings of the X3D Standard.

Envivio, Inc.Envivio is a leading provider of complete MPEG-4 and H.264 solution.Date added: 11/14/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Mostly active in commercial streaming, Envivio also has a nice little player for MPEG-4 on dusty old PCs

"EnvivioTV allows the user to interact directly with broadcast media, experiencing MPEG-4 interactive capabilities while selecting and interacting with multimedia objects. The range of interactive programming opportunities is limited only by the author's imagination, the targeted client platform's performance, and available bandwidth. The stand-alone version of the player can be integrated or ported onto any media device, including set-top boxes, PCs, PDAs, and game consoles."

Spun out of France Telecom in 1999, Envivio has extensive engineering experience gained by the founders during over 3 years of R&D on MPEG-4 at France Telecom. The company holds 11 patents in the MPEG-4 standard and leverages France Telecom's $10+ million investment in the development of the intellectual property and two generations of MPEG-4 software, which are now assets of Envivio.

Funded by financial and corporate leaders in the interactive TV market, Envivio is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and maintains operations in North America and Europe.

Still in beta, but quite stable and useful. Imports and exports a great scope of formats. Easy to use, and efficient for creating working content. Also handles H-anim, and imports from Blaxxun's Avatar Studio.

I use Flux Studio almost daily. Recommended for those who are just getting started in Web3D (like moi . . )

FragmosoftCreate and animate 3d models for your games with ease and without going broke.Date added: 4/5/2007 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

GIS ToolsI guess that like me, there are some of you that sometimes get GIS, DEM and Imagery data in a format that you're not familiar with and you wonder what you can use to get it into your preferred structure/format... To that end I have collated a list of freeware that can (generally) be used as data conversion tools. This list is sorted by Tool at http://www.grime.net/gistools and by Data Format Extension at http://www.grime.net/gistools/a-z.htm Please let me know of other (freeware) tools you have used to convert data and I'll be happy to add them.Date added: 7/8/2006 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Mpeg-4 is already here, but the advanced features (interactivity) are still evasive. X3D is part of the immersive profile here. That's nice.

GPAC is a multimedia framework based on the MPEG-4 Systems standard (ISO/IEC 14496-1) developed from scratch in ANSI C. As of version 0.4.0 GPAC is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Older GPAC versions are available under the GNU General Public License.

A collection of potentially useful conversion utilities, mostly centered on game-engines and animation. Some of these tools just might get you unstuck if your production pipeline chokes on seemingly incompatible formats.

Providers of "Chisel" and a versatile interactive LOD editor. Java-based, this tool can potentially save a lot of time since it handles the simplification tasks that otherwise have to be done by hand, or via, say, 3dsMax.

The LOD Tool is a piece of software that can be used to construct level-of-detail data from geometry data in ISO VRML97 format.

In its interactive mode, the user can use the LOD tool to generate simplified models, visually check the results of the simplifications, and adjust the distances associated with the varoious reduced models. Models can be sorted and replaced, and the results of model simplifications can be easily compared. Both the LOD configuration for a model and the resulting ISO VRML97 files can be saved.

From Halden, Norway, this tool can often save literally days of work since it can generate low-polygon variants of your geometry based on parameters you supply.

The LOD creation process involves replacing a node (a single shape or group of shapes) in a scene graph with a LOD node that encapsulates at least two graphical representations (the LOD node, and a set of nodes containing ordered less detailed representations). The less detailed representations are typically created using simplification techniques such as polygon reduction, or can be individually modelled using a 3D modelling tool. To configure a distance LOD, appropriate distances between levels are selected, typically based on the dimensions of the original object and the level of reduction.

FreeSL (Free Sound Library) is a OpenAL wrapper. It also includes the EAX 2.0 library for realistic environment simulations and the so called World Definition System where you are able to define different areas with different environments and let the WDS handle occlusion and obstruction as well as blending different environments that a sound will pass in.

The value of Milkshape is its veratility. The fact that it is poular among game-developers keeps it at the cutting edge. Works well with character FX for animation control. OPENGL.

MilkShape 3D is a low-polygon modeler, which was initially designed for Half-Life. During the development, many file formats have been added.

MilkShape 3D has all basic operations like select, move, rotate, scale, extrude, turn edge, subdivide, just to mention a few. MilkShape 3D also allows low-level editing with the vertex and face tool. Primitives like spheres, boxes and cylinders are also available.

MilkShape 3D has also skeletal animation capabilities. This allows to export to morph target animation like the ones in the Quake model formats or to export to skeletal animations like Half-Life or Genesis3d.

MilkShape 3D currently supports 37 different file formats from 27 different games/ engines/programs.

Dutch masters of motion capture. Rather high end. Extensive collection of samples, and, uner "News" some good demo reels.

MOTEK designs, creates, and markets (real-time) motion capture data solutions and products for various markets. Internationally recognized for its pioneering work in the field, MOTEK brings technologies developed for high-end simulation into a commercialised environment, such as the medical, simulation and advertising industries.

The French are on the vanguard with MPEG-4. This site is a good portal to recent tools and technology implementations, including downlods of viewers as well as authoring tools. French research.

Our team participates actively in MPEG since '95, and has contributed to MPEG-4 Systems mostly. We are active in BIFS, IM1 (reference software) and conformance testing (many Systems test sequences are from ENST). We have also been the first to create full application demonstrations, since the mosaic application in Atlantic City. Jean-Claude Dufourd is editor of the MPEG-4 Conformance document

Another entry in facial animation. This one is now included in the Unreal Technology's gaming engine.

OC3 Entertainment provides facial animation technology, which serves as the gateway for human-computer and human-human interaction in 3D environments. The video game industry is currently on the cutting edge of computer graphics, and OC3 Entertainment works with some of the world’s most respected game developers, publishers and middleware providers. More serious applications for facial animation technology include machinima, 3D communication systems, simulated training environments, and web-based customer relationship management applications.

Graphics engine migrating from gaming only to more universal apps, such as Lua/Emma 3D interactive.Another illustration of the vitality of Open Source communities.

OGRE v1.0 [Azathoth] represents the culmination of 4 years of continuous development, resulting in what is now regarded by many as the leading open source real time 3D rendering engine. OGRE is packed with features to make your development life easier, whether you're making games, architectural visualisation, simulations, or anything else which requires a top-notch 3D rendering solution.

OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine) is a scene-oriented, flexible 3D engine written in C++ designed to make it easier and more intuitive for developers to produce applications utilising hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. The class library abstracts all the details of using the underlying system libraries like Direct3D and OpenGL and provides an interface based on world objects and other intuitive classes.

Versatile link manager for all browser. Good to keep tabs on your favorite Worlds.This list of bookmarks was exported from Linkman using flexible editable templates.I use this all day long :-)You are looking at it . . .

I have used this collection of tools and utilities and found them very helpful.

The stitcher does require some manual editing of parameters in configuration textfiles, but once you get the hang of it the possibilities are endless, and the end result looks very clean.Once you learn to shood panoramas in a consistent manner these utilities can also be used in batch processing mode- turning out spherical immersive globules faster than you can say -Vielen Dank Herr Professor Helmut Dersch!!

PTStitcher: High quality, simple to use, all format stitching software.Panorama Tools: Photoshop plug-in for panorama creation, editing and remapping.PTViewer: High quality spherical viewer, Standalone and java versions for many platforms.

This site is an old (partial) mirror of Helmut Dersch's site downloaded just prior to his site being temporarily unavailable. His site is now available again and includes a new version of PTViewer. Please visit his current site for up to date information.http://webuser.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/

Blink 3D is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) environment for building and sharing full 3D, immersive, interactive, animated environments that can be viewed on the Web or locally.Based on Ogre, quite mature, and a viable alternative for authoring and deploying online VR.

Using Panorama Tools at the commandline takes some time to learn. This tool could make things more easy for the GUI-lover.

PTGui can stitch multiple rows of imagesCreate 360 degree cylindrical panoramas, 'flat' partial panoramas and even spherical 360x180 degree panoramasNo need to keep the camera level: PTGui can stitch rotated and tilted imagesVirtually unlimited output size: create Gigapixel panoramas from hundreds of images!Layered output allows full control over the final stitched result

Photo3D: 3D modeling from photo. You can easily create a collection of models and textures from actual world around you.Date added: 9/20/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Japanese tool for quickly creating vrml models textured with photographs. Does perspective and distortion corrections.

With Photo3D you can create a 3D model from a single photograph.Using multiple photographs you can create more complex3D models.Photo3D creates textures to be mapped on the model surface.Created models can be immediately examined in the preview mode.Photo3D corrects the lens distortion.

Reality Studio has been stagnant for several years. Quite a pity since this studio really delivers well in the area of linked 360 panos, with vrml mixed in.Iseemedia should really consider resuming development on this.This link is for a free trial version.

Right Hemisphere, Intel, and Adobe are pushing an alternative to X3D. Still not quite mature.

"U3D, The New Standard for 3D File SharingRecently, Intel, along with Ecma International, an industry standards group, and the 3D Industry Forum (3DIF), created an open and extensible format - Universal 3D (U3D) - for the sharing and visualization of 3D. Aimed at becoming the "JPEG" for 3D graphics, the U3D standard is already supported in a range of software products, including Adobe Acrobat."

Deep Creator™ is a powerful authoring application to create interactive 3D environments, assemblies and objects. This application delivers an integrated authoring environment which includes a 3D modeler, a texture creator, and a scripting engine in one package, all essential to producing powerful interactive 3D content.

Rune mesh export to OBJInfo on the Rune format, and exporter for MilkshapeDate added: 3/29/2006 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Chris Gwynhala Burke is the expert on exchange of Rune protocols. His program, Pygmalion, possibly the only one that allows you to access Rune meshes and animations.This opens the doors to importing creatures from UnrealEd and RuneEd to X3D.Think of it as a virtual museum.

Listed on the Facegen site- this is a useful list of various ways to have your character animated, and synched to text, realtime or offline.Facegen is a commercial alternative, somewhat pricey licence, but it does work well!\If you need to generate typical faces of various human "races" in a hurry this is the way to go.Good possibilities for parametric generation of facial geometry/synthetic emotions.

Singular Inversions specializes in statistical modelling of the shape and appearance of human faces."Stand-alone parametric face modelling software for Windows. Create faces from one or more photographs, or at random. Edit faces in over 150 ways, including race, age and gender. Choose between different mesh structures and UV layouts. Export to most 3D file formats, complete with morphs."

SkyPaintUtilty to touch-up backgrounds used in panoramas or VRMLDate added: 11/15/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Emotional speech synthesis is coming. Avatars will be able to sound very convincing with this.

A physics-based facial animation system was combined with an equally flexible and expressive text-to-speech synthesis system, based upon the same emotion model, to form a talking head capable of expressing non-basic emotions of varying intensities.

SIM Rational Reducer is an award-winning tool for reducing the number of polygons in 3D models, while preserving visual quality. Produces faster rendering and shorter download time.

Rational Reducer is fully automatic, helping you achieve in minutes results that would have taken days of manual work.

Rational Reducer is currently in use by NASA, US Army, Toyota, Airbus, Statoil, Norsk Hydro and many others.

(Max Plugin costs around 5000 Euros)

SIM shall be recognized as a world-leading supplier of powerful 3D software to demanding industry customers.SIM shall give our customers the best value for money they can get within the 3D software industry. Our business shall be profitable. Profitability is a fundamental basis for surviving.

This handy utility will generate terrains randomly, or if you have height-information (it accepts a variety of formats) it will "recreate" the hills and valleys over a textured map.

Terragen is a scenery generator, created with the goal of generating photorealistic landscape images and animations. It is available for Windows and the Mac OS. At this stage in its development, Terragen is free for personal, noncommercial use.

Vcom3D creates Web content and online courses that include the magic of characters acting as mentors and as actors in role-playing simulations in which the learner must decide how to respond to different situations.

Pano2QTVR is a freeware tool that converts cylindrical and spherical panoramas into QTVR movies on the Windows platform. Hotspots, FOV, pan, tilt, and zoom parameters can be defined with ease as well as copyright tracks. Pano2QTVR is available as command line program or as a GUI; its layout is intuitive and makes it a breeze to use. And best of all, it’s free for non-commercial use of the output files.

While there are many 3D VRML browsers, there are few stand-alone data conversion programs which properly implement the import of VRML files; we hope that making this carefully coded VRML import converter available will satisfy the many requests from our users who have long sought a good VRML import solution.

Well, this is wonderful!Just connect to this URL with your browser and see what it says about the plugs and other 3D critters you have installed. Well, first I went there with my favorite, Opera, and ended up with:Web browser: Opera 8.50 (Plugin Help)

White_dune is a low level VRML97 tool for Unix/Linux/MacOSX and M$Windows.It can read VRML97 files, display and let the user change the scenegraph/fields.Unlike most highlevel tools, it uses a light model based on the VRML97 standard.

WOTgreal - the editing tool for the Unreal® EngineWOTgreal is a fully functional IDE for UnrealScript. It integrates with UCC.exe for compilation, and class extraction. It has it's own mesh extractorDate added: 3/26/2006 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Advanced code editing and standalone export of meshes, etc.Beware that Unreal content is under licence.

wxWidgets HomewxWidgets is a mature open-source cross-platform C++ GUI framework for Windows, Unix, Linux, MacOS. It can make use of a variety of native widget sets as well as its own widget set: WIN32, GTK+, Motif, MacOS. wxWidgets will even run on embedded systems using Linux and X11.Date added: 11/10/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format. It is roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3, VQF, AAC, and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented

4. RESOURCES for production: objects, avatars, images, code, protocols, animationsSometimes it is practical to simply download a piece of geometry, a nice texture, or a PROTO, or some other code instead of starting from scratch.

Reinventing the cube does not make sense. Modifying a mesh is usually better than starting from primitives (although one might do it from time to time just to stay fit).

Web3D techniques are time-consuming. Fortunately, there are lots of prefabricated nodes out there in the Big Cloud: here-below are some places I have found worthy of passing on.

These resources span a wide spectrum from abstracted prototypes to fully animated avatars. The market for virtual goods has been growing steadily for quite a while already, and virtual economies are emerging throughout cyberspace.

If you counted the hours to make these yourself, you understandably would consider downloading one.

For example, $320 buys a beautiful animated young Russian girl:

Masha Realistic 3d model of young woman named Masha for 3dsMax 5 and higher.

The model has perfect edge-loops based topology with rational polygons count.Detailed anatomy and skin shading makes this model good for close-up render. model rigged by CharacterStudio4 biped+Physique and ready for animation.

Facial animation provided with 'morpher' modifier, model has 10 morph targets + variable eye pupil (see preview), all of that can be easily animated by an on-screen sliders.

3 type of hairs are included, the hairs are created as an alpha-textured mesh objects and does not require any additional plugs.

File also includes all shown garments, rigged in the same way as a body. for non-tight-fitting clothes (skirt and laps of dress) for best simulation you may use one of free-downloadable cloth simulation plug-ins.

The model is render-ready. Materials & high-res textures are included.

3D Total - The cg artists home page3D Total - The CG artists homepage, daily news with links to all the best 3d animations and site. Huge libraries and galleries with free downloads (meshes/textures etc) and amazing artwork.Date added: 4/5/2006 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Al Razutis is still a cybervisionary, one of the virtual archetypes.The musings here give an interesting perspective on trends and fads in Web3D.

3D design can be fascilitated by the many available software tools (Cosmo, TrueSpace, 3D FX, 3D Studio Max, Maya, etc.), latest upgrades and techniques, and the neverending styles of 'what's cool on the web'.

So what if the latest trick isn't employed? (The tribe rushes off to find the 'new' as if its a pill to pop to offset the boredom of 'repetition'.) If being 'first' becomes the rule, then everyone is doomed to being 'second' (and, 'gasp', being 'late').

My personal experience has been to mistrust the conceits of the priorities of tech and those that are seduced by the disposable 'new'. These conceits I have seen variously in 3D computer graphics, virtual reality, 3D Video, and holography. They are analogous to the web 'dating game' which strives to fulfill a need for 'updated experience' by constantly trading in the past (partner) for a new (stimulus) experience. Chat, chat. Avatar Mall.

USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) EROS, Sioux Falls, SDGTOPO30 is a global digital elevation model (DEM) resulting from a collaborative effort led by the U.S. Geological Survey's EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, S.D. GTOPO30 was developed to meet the needs of the geospatial data user community for regional and continental scale 30-arc second elevation data.Date added: 7/7/2006 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

free downloads of 1 km resolution DEM data, by sector, worldwide

Virtual Terrain ProjectActive community of people sharing resources, especially for building georeferenced web3D.Date added: 11/12/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

It's mostly free and open source, driven by cyber visionaries; the project manager and lead developer is Ben Discoe. The site also offers many examples and applications along with academic discussions.

The goal of VTP is to foster the creation of tools for easily constructing any part of the real world in interactive, 3D digital form.

This goal will require a synergetic convergence of the fields of CAD, GIS, visual simulation, surveying and remote sensing. VTP gathers information and tracks progress in areas such as procedural scene construction, feature extraction, and rendering algorithms. VTP writes and supports a set of software tools, including an interactive runtime environment (VTP Enviro). The tools and their source code are freely shared to help accelerate the adoption and development of the necessary technologies."

This virtual tour of Yosemite national park is impressive! Make sure you have the bandwidth and graphic power ready. Nice implementation of LOD. Many examples to browse here.

Good portal to sources for geoVRML datasets.

"A 21x27 km region inside Yosemite National Park, CA, at 1 m resolution imagery. The data include Yosemite Valley, featuring El Capitan and Half Dome. This dataset contains a total of 11 levels of detail, with a total dataset size of 1.9 GB. The imagery for this dataset is 21135 x 27090 pixels (JPEG compressed)."

One of the main reasons why there has been so little "concrete" Web3D to be seen is the need for those extra clicks and installation hurdles frequently required to reach the content. Most visitors simply didn't want to be bothered, and left for more user-friendly sites. But this is changing now (2007).

One case in point, once again, is "Second Life". It was difficult to access, confusing and chaotic, yet it did boom because lots and lots of people found it fascinating and rewarding enough to go through with the learning curve. Second Life offers new creative possibilities, a working virtual economy along with enticing dimensions of social intimacy. People clearly want this enough to jump the technological hurdle and participate.

One major issue remaining is the question of standards. Will we continue to see commercial proprietary offerings in another "browsers' war", or will open standards dominate? My personal inclination is strongly towards an approach that allows content to be accessed universally, by any machine in any OS, free from patents or restrictive licences.

Bitmanagement Software is considered by many the standard in their field against whom all others are measured. It may be the most widely used 3D browser today, and the most stable.

But these developers are also forging ahead with innovation, especially in the opening field of interactive MPEG-4.

The team of Bitmanagement actively supports the standardization of VRML as well as the todays VRML successor X3D (ISO/IEF(Final Draft International Standard) 19775 and realized the affiliation of several nodes (such as Nurbs) into the standard. An overview shows up fundamental VRML functionalities.

Furthermore BS Contact VRML/X3D supports extensive extensions, that are needed by todays tools for the creation of 3D models and worlds. These extensions extend the usability of the visualization components up to a multimedia viewer for photo/ video/ audio and interactive realtime 2D/3D.

It's another case of my laptop showing its age. Things run, but not very well. I need to test this on more current hardware.

The support claimed for MPEG-4 is interesting- I wonder how extensive this support is in terms of interactivity.

Octaga has won appeal to high-end users, and large corporate groups. The integration of a digital wide-screen projector is "right on the money".

Now, we are waiting to see these resourceful folk join the Web3D consortium :-)

The Octaga Product PlatformThe Octaga technology offer useres a complete suite of 3D players, server and development environment based on the latest techniques and research. All products are all based on the same abstracthed system architecture. The Octaga Platform is designed to be allow easy integrated with your applications, regardless if you operate in CAD, Engineering, Education, Architecture or Distributed Simulation. The Octaga Platform product family also includes a SDK for developers of extensions to the players and server.

Octaga is committedto support to ISO standards like VRML, X3D, MPEG-4, IFC, GML, and to have the best implementations of there in our viewing and server products..

The Web3D consortium offers not only official standards, but also this java-based viewer, well suited to test compliance with the X3D spec.

Xj3D is a project of the Web3D Consortium Source Working Group focused on creating a toolkit for VRML97 and X3D content written completely in Java. It serves a dual purpose of being an experimental codebase for trying out new areas of the X3D specification and as a library that we encourage application developers to use within their own application to support X3D technology.

6 . PORTALS: forums, reviews, associations, visionaries, galleries, e-Zines, cyber-theoryHere are sites that serve as portals or general forums where you can stay informed on the latest developments in the field. It is becoming a full-time occupation merely to keep abreast with the explosive evolution in the area of Web3D. There are links to links to links without end in sight.

After a year of delving into the field I have come to a point where I now routinely revisit the sites and portals that I know I can trust to keep an eye on significant emerging trends. There are also a number of forums where I hang out (hey, just Google "vnomad"!) to seek virtual wisdom.

This is where arists learn to master high-end programs, with an emphasis on XSI. Integration pipelines for Zbrush as well.DeAngelis speaks from experience, “You can put a team of great people together, but if you don’t have solid infrastructure, or agreed work methods, it’s really hard to get things accomplished. A team of talented artist all bring unique talents and experiences to a team, but this doesn’t always guarantee that things will work from day one--a pipeline is unique to every studio.

Online magazine covering trends in 3D, well worth visiting every now and then to stay informed.

About the magazine3D World is the only international magazine for 3D artists: from home users to leading professionals. Each issue provides analysis of latest trends in the market, artistic and technical advice, impartial product reviews, and behind-the-scenes articles on the making of key projects in this progressive and fast-paced industry.

DevMaster.net Forums - Powered by vBulletinDevMaster.net is a game development website that provides articles, a 3D engines database, a wiki, daily news updates, and an active forum!Date added: 6/29/2006 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

GameDev.net - all your game development needsGamedev.net is the leading resource for game developers, featuring daily news updates, over 1500 featured articles and tutorials, dozens of game development jobs, and the most active game development forums anywhere!Date added: 10/23/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

FANTASTIC SITE (naturally).Take a look at their forums. A great place to learn programming. Game developers have to be clever.

GameDev.Net Discussion ForumsGamedev.net is the leading resource for game developers, featuring daily news updates, over 1500 featured articles and tutorials, and the most active game development forums anywhere!Date added: 6/29/2006 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Take a look to see who won, what they built, and with what tools.And enjoy!

Hex value hexvalue digital gallery HexValue is a online gallery of digital artworks. HexValue show artists artworks from all over the world and their digital creations.Date added: 7/15/2006 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Community (slightly on the decadent side) sharing virtual fantasies.Inspirational.

Since I am an oldtime user of Reality Studio this forum is interesting to me.

If they could update their viewer to include things like nurbs, h-anim, and support for sophisticated shaders I wold have few reasons to look further. As it stands right now, I'm using Flux to show things that iseeMedia can't.

The Escapist - Game Design in the Transfigured WorldIn the next two centuries, roleplaying ideas will transform society. Game designers can help. Allen Varney predicts the day when imminent ubiquitous net allows reputation to abstract relationships in the same way money abstracts labor.Date added: 11/30/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Daniel Thalmann's renowned research institute. Both his wife and he are authorities in Web3D.Strong emphasis here on the interactive aspects of augmented reality.

Some of their projects are esoteric, but fascinating. The "Project Humaine" in particular.

The Virtual Reality Lab (VRlab), formerly Computer Graphics Lab (LIG), at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne (map) was founded in July 1988 by its director, Professor Daniel Thalmann. The laboratory is mainly involved in the modelling and animation of Three-Dimensional Inhabited Virtual Worlds. VRlab is a world leader laboratory in real-time Virtual Humans and a key player in the area of multimodal interaction, immersive Virtual Environments, and Augmented Reality.

VRML RingThe VRML Ring is open to all websites containing VRML embedded files or links to work created using any of the VR builder software. The VRML Ring consists of websites linked together to form a TourDate added: 9/27/2005 Last URL validation: 4/29/2007

Good portal to VRML content. Go here to visit some actual virtual worlds!

Check in here to spy the GOOGLE ads that tag the focus. This gives a perspective on who does what in VRML-related areas, in business.

I suppose I'll have to join this ring some day.

The VRML Ring is open to all websites containing VRML embedded files or links to work created using any of the VR builder software. The VRML Ring consists of websites linked together to form a "Tour" of VRML content sites. Unlike a simple list of links, the VRML Ring will provide a guided tour of the VR websites linked together by the VRML Ring.

This is a fine place to go for solid specifications and standards, in particular regarding X3D. There is also a mailinglist with very insightful threads; learn what the real experts think about Web3D, and how they eff the ineffable ;-)

Web3D has a high activity level in France. The French build with a fine sense of aesthetic, and light humor- there is a delightful quality of playfulness mixed with sophisticated savoir-faire.Run by Cecile Muller.

**************Here's a little test to see how much you have the VRML disease : -- Add one point if you can type the infamous #VRML V2.0 utl8 header with your nose-- Add two points if your wife/husband/dog left you because you were spending too much time on VRML-- Remove one point if you didn't notice the typo in "#VRML V2.0 utf8" on the first question-- Add one point if you tried to edit your wife in VrmlPad but couldn't find the right unzip program-- Add one point if you find your wife's WorldInfo{} node-- Add one point if you find which lines of the prototype Wife{} crash the browser when having multiple instances-- Add one point if you find which lines of the the prototype Wife{} can USE the toplevel-scene line DEF money Switch{} and sets its whichChoice to -1.-- Add one point if your favorite cussing is "This is sfboolshit !".-- Add one point if you find which lines of the prototypes Wife{} and Mistress{} give a eventOut "disabled" when using shared variables-- Add one point if you draw geometric primitives with your food-- Add one point if you don't sleep more than 4 times a week-- Add one point if you even forgot where's your eventIn SFTime sleep-- Add one point if you start all your mails by "Dear node.getName(),"-- Add one point if it already occured that you skipped dinner because you didn't go to the shop because doing VRML instead-- Add one point if you forgot to go to the shop the whole week because of VRML-- Add one point if, when taking a piece of paper for remembering to go to the shop, you see that you wrote it already last week and that all you got left is a can of raviolis hidden under spider webs-- Add two points if the neighbours had to call the medics because you were starving-- Add one point if you rely only on your VRML calendar to tell you in which season you're in-- Add one point if you finish all your sentences by ";"-- Add one point if you find how to ROUTE a ProximitySensor's enterTime to your home's door-- Add one point if you think reality has nice lightmaps and textures

Cybertown is an archetypal virtual community.The Guild is just what you might expect: a group of proven builders.Good information on the art of creating avatars.

The intention of the following pages is to provide insight and information to individuals wishing to know more about the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) in order to help them more fully participate in the 3D activities of Cybertown.

7. GEEK'S PARADISENeed I say more?Sometimes, in the heat of serendipity, I stumble across stuff that is simply ~~~WAY COOL~~~.Of course, tomorrow most of this bleeding edge innovation will simply look quaint and passee; and some of today's innovations will live on merely to be taken for granted.